The question doesn't need to be hypothetical. I am moving to a country exactly like that. From the US.

Lack of modern health care coverage alone is enough to justify it. A bonus is that the quality of life across the board is significantly higher.

That is objectively not socialism (any definition of socialism that begins by defining it as a form of capitalism is fundamentally confused)

That said, I’d agree that it is a widespread misunderstanding today. And what people mean when they say socialism is usually actually social democracy (which despite sounding like the word socialism is a mixed system based on capitalism)

Using that misunderstanding as the definition I would definitely live in many of those countries. Many have some of the highest qualities of life in the world, low rates of poverty, universal access to good healthcare and education, and good social mobility.

E.g Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Germany

Provided there is an appropriate amount of technocracy (decisions made by experts rather than politicians), it'd be hard for me to think of a better form of government.

Anyway, this was largely the US until Regan. Social safety net could've been stronger, but that had to evolve. Same as in Europe.

Except , racism. Addressing that is not a part of any definition of socialism that I'm aware of. Equality is certainly going along with the spirit of this definition of "socialism"

"Socialists of Lemmy, would you move to a country that someone who has absolutely no idea what socialism is thinks is socialist?"

Lmao.

@nodsocket @PetDinosaurs > OP: what socialist policies would you implement?
> commenter: what do you mean by socialism?
> OP: let's go with an incorrect definition of socialism. what social democrat policies would you implement?

I would love to.

When many people say socialism, what they mean is capitalist democracy

Lol. Lmao, even

No, "most people" do not consider that to be what socialism is. Particularly those of us who live in countries with the aforementioned policies. Here we've had real socialists who wanted to take away our fundamental individual rights, amongst them the right to ownership, which frankly is a scary idea.

A lot of our regulations and limits on the free market don't have a socialist bent at all, but are intended to defend our individual liberties against large corporations, which if left unchecked can become corporate institutions, something the US has fallen victim to.

I'd consider these policies as important, if not moreso than our social welfare systems. The social mobility and safety provided by these are meaningless if an arbitrary decision by google, amazon or some bank can singlehandedly ruin your life.

It is, the term for this type of system is called Social Democracy which is not a synonym for socialism, but people (Americans at least) confused and conflate the two terms to the point that they’ve become one and the same in the minds of many people who don’t really understand the terms or their origins.

Because we're too busy categorizing this stupid shit into bins of "good" and "bad" when reality is a greyscale between these two. These are fairly reasonable points and should be viewed as a more centrist POV, but since we (read: primarily North America) have a tribal "us vs. them" animosity about it we lump many reasonable ideas together on each end of the spectrum. Things like not having to go bankrupt when you or a loved one needs an emergency hospital visit somehow automatically gets lumped in with the other extreme "socialist" ideas just to solely argue against it and not budge from their end of the extreme.

Words, used in non technical contexts, mean what people mean when they use them.

Descriptive. Not proscriptive.